Many infamous characters lived at Alcatraz
"Among the prison’s most notorious
residents were Al “Scarface” Capone, brutal kingpin of the Chicago
underworld during the Roaring Twenties; kidnapper George “Machine Gun”
Kelly; bank robber Floyd Hamilton, an accomplice of Bonnie and Clyde;
Arthur “Doc” Barker and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a member of the infamous Ma
Barker Gang; Roy Gardner, last of the “Old West” train robbers; “Bumpy”
Johnson, the Godfather of Harlem; Morton Sobell, convicted in the
Rosenberg espionage case; and Robert “Birdman” Stroud. Stroud was
later immortalized by actor Burt Lancaster in The Birdman of Alcatraz
film as a kindly bird lover. But in actuality, Stroud was a homicidal
sociopath whom one longtime Alcatraz officer likened to “Jekyll and
Hyde.”'
-NPS |
